Physical means to do with the body, or made of matter you can put your hands on. A physical job that leaves your shoulders aching; a physical copy of an album instead of a file on your phone.
The body sense is everywhere: physical exercise, physical contact, physically fit, physical therapy after an operation. The matter sense covers anything solid enough to hold — physical evidence, the physical world, a physical address rather than an email one. In science it points at physics and the study of matter, as in physical chemistry and the physical sciences. In American English a physical is a noun all by itself, the medical check-up your employer sends you for. And when a situation gets physical, it has turned to shoving and grabbing, which is why the phrase sounds like a warning.
1adjectivephysicalTo do with the body rather than the mind.~74%
“Long hours of physical work left him too tired to read.”
synonyms: bodily
2adjectivematerialExisting as a real object you can touch.~8%
“There is no physical copy of the contract, only a scan.”
3adjectivematterTo do with matter and the laws of nature; belonging to physics.~16%
“The physical laws predict exactly how far the light will bend.”
4nounexaminationA medical examination to check that someone is fit and well.~2%
“The airline makes every pilot take a physical each year.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 12 sentences found in the wild and placed 12 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
Physical came through Latin physicālis from physica, the study of nature, which Latin had taken from Greek physikē, the feminine of physikos, natural. Behind that stands physis — origin, birth, nature, the shape a thing grows into — from the verb phyō, to grow, and finally a Proto-Indo-European root bʰuH-, to appear or rise up. The word begins with growing things and ends up covering everything solid enough to touch.
Proto-Indo-European
*bʰuH-
Latin
physicālis
English, today
physical
Built from
Latin physicālis, from Latin physica (“study of nature”), from Ancient Greek φυσική, feminine singular of φυσικός (“natural; physical”), from φύσις (“origin, birth; nature, quality; form, shape; type, kind”), from φῠ́ω (“grow”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European bʰuH- (“to appear, become, rise up”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA